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Tracey Emin has said she was slammed against a wall by "a famous artist" who sexually assaulted her at a party.

Emin, best known for a Turner Prize-nominated 1999 exhibition which presented her unmade bed as an artwork, said of the incident: “The irony is it happened to be a woman that grabbed hold of my crotch [and] slammed me against a wall."

Speaking during an interview with art collector Kenny Goss, former partner of the singer George Michael, she said:

"I threatened to punch her lights out. I grabbed hold of her. Everybody said you can’t do that because she was a famous artist. I was much younger and said, ‘Yeah, I can – she can’t touch me like that.’

“It’s the same thing. What’s the difference if it’s a woman’s doing it or a man doing it?" she asked, in an interview for the HIV prevention charity MTV Staying Alive. "If it’s someone in a higher position of power or someone who thinks they’re going to get away with it because of who they are, that’s what the problem is.”

Emin, 54, has used previous experiences of sexual assault in her work; her 2004 film Top Spot was inspired by her rape at the age of 13.

In 2014, the artist announced she had married a large rock in France. "It just means that at the moment I am not alone," she said at the time. "Somewhere on a hill facing the sea, there is a very beautiful ancient stone, and it’s not going anywhere."

Her latest artwork, a 20-metre-long neon sculpture of the words "I want my time with you", was unveiled at 9am today in London's St Pancras railway station, below the station clock.